The Child Refugee Debate

About This Lesson

The previous lesson provided an introduction to the wider social and historical context that informed Americans’ responses to Nazism and the Jewish refugee crisis it provoked. In this lesson, students explore one flashpoint in the debate over how to respond to that crisis: the 1939 Wagner-Rogers Bill, which proposed admitting 20,000 German refugee children over two years to the United States outside of the existing immigration quotas. The bill ultimately died without ever coming to a vote, but the congressional hearings and public debate surrounding it provide excellent opportunities for students to understand Americans’ various responses to the refugee crisis. On Day 1 of the lesson, students will investigate a radio play, “Miss American,” that was produced in support for the Wagner-Rogers legislation, considering how the play explores deeper questions about national identity, priorities, and values. On both days, students will reflect on the political, economic, and social pressures Americans faced as they considered how to respond to the refugee crisis. The next lesson will shift focus from policy debates to individual stories—specifically those of Jewish refugees attempting to immigrate to the United States and the Americans who helped them.

Essential Questions

In times of crisis, what does it take to move from knowledge to action?

Guiding Questions

• How did competing ideas about national identity, priorities, and values surface during the debate over the 1939 Wagner-Rogers Bill?
• To what extent did these ideas reflect a gap between Americans’ willingness to sympathize with refugees and willingness to act on their behalf?

Learning Objectives

• Through an analysis of the radio play “Miss American” and sources covering the range of positions on the 1939 Wagner-Rogers Bill, students will be able to explain how the debate reflected competing ideas about national identity, priorities, and values.
• Students will reflect on how the history of the Wagner-Rogers debate can inform our understanding of contemporary debates concerning multiple refugee crises.

Lesson Plan

Day 1 Activities

Activity 1: Provide Context for the “Miss American” Radio Play and Its Creator

Before reviewing students’ answers to the basic recall questions they answered for homework as they read the transcript provided with the “Miss American” audio (see the Notes to Teacher section for more detail), give students some background on the radio play. Tell them that this play coincided with a debate over a proposed bill to admit 20,000 German refugee children under the age of 14 over a two-year period, and the play was used to advocate for the bill. Some students may be unfamiliar with what a radio play is. 

Tell them that it is a play written to be broadcast on the radio, a form of entertainment that was popular from the 1920s through the 1950s, before the advent of television. 

Tell them that this particular radio play was produced in 1938, that it was written by the playwright Arch Oboler, and that it starred Katharine Hepburn, who was a major film star of the time. 

Time permitting, you might share the following information with students, or use this information to answer questions that may arise:

Oboler was born to Latvian Jewish immigrants and spent his early career writing pulp fiction, including for NBC’s wildly popular midnight horror radio program Lights Out. In the 1930s, as fascism began to take hold across the world, Oboler shifted his focus to anti-fascist writing. “Miss American,” which aired alongside another radio play, “Suffer Little Children,” pleaded with American audiences to offer more aid to Jewish refugee children. The plays originally aired on the NBC Red network on June 26, 1939, which coincided with congressional debate over the Wagner-Rogers legislation. Oboler continued to write anti-fascist plays during World War II, most famously the wartime propaganda series Plays for Americans. When asked about his transition from writing for horror programs to writing about the threat of fascism, he said that he wanted audiences to “take in the actual horror of a world facing, with half-shut eyes, the fascistic Frankenstein’s monster moving over Europe.”

Activity 2: Listen to “Miss American”

Tell students that they will now be listening to the radio play “Miss American” (14:54) as a class and taking notes on the following focus questions:

• What artistic choices from the radio play (acting, dialogue, sound, etc.) stand out to you?
• How does hearing the voices and sound from the radio play complement, influence, or change your understanding of the play?

Ask volunteers to share their answers with the class.

Activity 3: Discuss Larger Themes

Tell students that they will now be conducting a close read of the radio play. Divide the class into small groups of three to five students. Using the handout “Miss American” Close Reading, students will read aloud the text in chunks and answer a set of text-dependent questions.

Regroup as a class and ask volunteers to share their answers to the questions on the handout. Then transition into a larger whole-class discussion using one or more of the following prompts:

1. This play highlights two ideas about who America is for and who is entitled to its privileges that have been in tension throughout the entire history of the country. What are they?
2. By the end of the play, Ronnie comes around to the children’s point of view. Imagine Americans who might be listening to this radio play in the 1930s. Who might have agreed with that vision? Who might have disagreed? Who might have been skeptical that that vision could be a reality?
3. Based on your knowledge of American history and current events, where else do you see the debate taking place over who America is for today?

Day 2 Activities

Activity 1: Spark Student Interest through a Political Cartoon

To open the lesson, project or distribute copies of the cartoon Please Ring the Bell for Us. To give students the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about the image, do not provide any context at this time other than the title.

Lead students through a See, Think, Wonder activity, pausing after each prompt to give them time to record their thoughts. Consider asking students to add one or two more ideas to each response before moving to the next question. This step can push students to examine the image more closely, perhaps making a new observation or inference or posing a new question.

Ask students to debrief with a partner using the Think, Pair, Share strategy. Alternatively, if you projected the image, you might invite students one at a time to the board to share their “sees” and “thinks,” having them point to details in the image as they present. You might also list some of their “wonders” on the board or chart paper to refer to later in the lesson. Once students have shared, tell them that they will be returning to the cartoon once they have learned more about the period.

Activity 2: Explore the Wagner-Rogers Legislation Debate

Tell students that in the next activity, they will be exploring both sides of the debate surrounding the Wagner-Rogers Bill, a bill to admit 20,000 German refugee children under the age of 14 over a two-year period. The bill specified that 10,000 children each fiscal year (1939 and 1940) would enter the United States and not be counted against the existing immigration quota laws. The bill also specified that when the refugee children reached the age of 18, they would either be counted against that year’s German immigration quota or would return to Europe.

Write on the board or project the following guiding question:

How did the Wagner-Rogers debate reveal competing ideas about American identity, priorities, and values?

Pass out documents to students. Everyone should receive the document “Joint Resolution 64 (the Wagner-Rogers Bill)” for reference and to understand the wording of the bill that sparked such debate. Each student should also receive one of the following sources from the Wagner-Rogers Debate Documents handout:

• Con:
  • Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post
  • Remarks from Senator Robert Reynolds
  • Statement from Frances H. Kinnicutt
  • Statement from Mr. John B. Trevor
• Pro:
  • Statement from Clarence E. Pickett
  • Letter from an “American Girl”
  • Statement from John Brophy
  • Non-Sectarian Committee for Refugee Children

Distribute the handout Essential Quote Worksheet. Prompt students to read their assigned documents. You might choose to have students read together with others who have the same handout. After reading, each student will independently choose one “essential quote” from their document that helps to answer the guiding question: How did the Wagner-Rogers debate reveal competing ideas about American identity, priorities, and values?

After choosing quotations, students can complete boxes 1 to 3 on the worksheet.

Next, students will find a partner who has a different handout, share their quotations, and discuss how their quotations are related to each other. Do their ideas corroborate, complement, or contradict each other? After their partner discussions, students can complete boxes 4 to 6 on their worksheets. End the activity by asking students to share some of their findings with the class.

Connect students’ study of the Wagner-Rogers Bill with larger themes by returning to the cartoon (“Please Ring the Bell for Us”) that students first examined at the beginning of class. Share with students the cartoon’s caption:

This cartoon, by Francis Knott for the Dallas Morning News, was published on July 7, 1939. It accompanied an editorial that described admitting refugee children to the United States as an “act of simple humanity.”

Ask students to respond to the following questions, first in their journals and then in the Think, Pair, Share format:

• After studying the debate over the Wagner-Rogers Bill, what new insights do you have about the cartoonist’s message? How does the cartoonist convey that message?

Once students have shared their answers with a partner, take some time to debrief the questions as a class. Make sure that students note how the cartoon uses an emotional appeal to stir viewers. Then ask students to discuss the following questions as a class:

• Why do you think the Wagner-Rogers Bill was aimed at rescuing children and excluded adults? How did the focus on children play into the arguments on both sides of the debate?
• Why do you think the Wagner-Rogers Bill failed?

Activity 3: Reflect on Connections to the Present

Close the lesson by giving students an opportunity to reflect on connections to the present. Ask students to journal independently in response to the following prompt:

• Support for the admittance of refugees has been a topic of debate throughout American history. What did you learn from studying the Wagner-Rogers Bill debate about the tension between American values and ideals and American priorities and realities?
• How does looking at this debate from the past help you better understand Americans’ responses to current refugee crises?